Back in March, gamers were in for a surprise when it was made known that Game Freak (known mostly for their work on core Pokemon games) was working on an action platformer for SEGA based on a Rambo-style elephant, called Tembo the Badass Elephant.
The good news is that you won't have to wait much longer to play it. Even better — each platform will offer 10% off discounts. Here's what you need to do on each platform to qualify:
Steam — Preorder anytime from now until launch
PS4 — Be a PlayStation Plus Subscriber
Xbox One — Be an Xbox Live Gold member
Tembo the Badass Elephant will make his big debut on July 21 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam for $14.99.
Will you be picking up this game?

A while back, there were a handful of sites that got a strange postcard hinting at a partnership project between SEGA and Game Freak. While my eager heart jumped immediately to a Pulseman sequel (I'm quite fond of that game, as a SEGA Channel kid), it turns out we're getting something brand new.
Tembo the Badass Elephant is an action-platformer coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, as a digital download. It's target release is sometime this summer.
What's the game all about? Feel free to check out the trailer below, but here's a quick summary: Shell City is attacked by the PHANTOM Army, who terrorize the city with skull-clad tanks and various destructive things. Shell City's General calls upon the only force capable of standing up to such a threat...Tembo, whose name sounds like "Rambo" and "Commando" for a reason. It's up to this commando-badass elephant to jump, smash, swing and butt-stomp his way to victory.
Based on the trailer...it's as crazy of a premise as it sounds. But considering how bonkers Pulseman was in its day, I'm optimistic.
Of course, Game Freak and SEGA not co-existing on Wii U is definitely jarring to some. Here's a piece from an interview with the game's director that might explain why PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam are its intended platforms:
"When I was writing the presentation documents for this game, I drew a mockup poster, and I put the Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox logos at the bottom. It seemed to fit, and it happened to stick that way. We thought about other hardware during development, but our hands were pretty full with those three platforms!"
We'll offer more information on Tembo the Badass Elephant as it comes.
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Are you excited about Tembo? How did you feel about HarmoKnight, the last new endeavor to come from Game Freak? Be sure to share your thoughts with us!

A couple days ago, Game Freak teased a mystery collaboration game for everyone to wonder what the company best known for Pokemon had cooking. Today, Game Freak revealed their new title... Soliti Horse, an unusual mixture of Solitaire and horse racing. Well, they did say it was a surprising collaboration!
According to Siliconera's translation of the announcement, this 3DS eShop title will have two modes of play that you can switch between at any time. In 'Solitaire Phase', you play Solitaire in order to strengthen the bonds with your horse and make them become more powerful. In 'Control Mode', you guide your race horse using the touch screen. You also raise your horse and can share your horse using QR Codes.
Soliti Horse will be available in the Japanese eShop on July 31st for 500 yen. There's no plans for a US release yet.
Were you expecting this? If this comes Stateside, will you pick Soliti Horse up?

The developer behind the mainline Pokemon series of games on handhelds, Game Freak, is now teasing a new collaboration on its website.
The teaser image shows an obscured creature of some sort; the outline of the left side of it makes it look like a type of horse or pony. As for the Japanese text, IGN's translation reads, "A classic game that's played all over the world will be reborn in a surprising collaboration."
It's assumed the collaboration will likely involve Pokemon since that is Game Freak's bread and butter, but which classic game are they referring to? Are they talking about a board game or a video game? Or even a sports game?
We'll have to wait and see. For now, there is no countdown or expected date of announcement; only a vague "coming soon." Whatever it is, perhaps it will be announced in an upcoming Nintendo Direct.
What do you think Game Freak's collaboration will involve?

Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Date: October 7, 2012
ESRB: E
This review is based on the Pokemon White 2 version
If any series has partaken from the Fountain of Youth, it is Pokemon.The effete criticisms of cynical once-fans, jaded by superficially unchanged gameplay and the introduction of hundreds of unfamiliar Pokemon faces, haven“t touched the series. Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are testaments to this; nearly fifteen years after the original two came Stateside, a fifth generation of Pokemon games hit the shelves. But those years were long to travel, and it hasn“t all been uphill. Time is rarely kind, so one has to wonder, can Pokemon survive the trip? Nothing is gained without something lost, but Black 2 and White 2 Versions does honor to those games that came before.
Two years have passed since the Hero defeated N in the events of Pokemon Black and White, and Unova has changed. You play a new character from the small town of Aspertia City, a new area set at the foot of some mountains. Bianca, now a professor“s assistant, comes to town and gives you a new Pokemon and sends you out on your journey.
It becomes the age-old tale of traveling across the lands, reaching far and wide, but for fans of the series, there“s nostalgia here. Instead of eking a destiny from the unfathomed lands of a new region, the Unova region has the distinct impression of the last game“s events. Players will trudge through the footprints left behind from the last protagonist, while seeing how the landscape changed because of them.
For a Pokemon story, Black 2 and White 2 follow the trend set up by the original two, doing extremely well by virtue of actually having a proper story. It isn“t just â€œgo collect badges with some Team Whatever B-Plot,â€ instead going for integrating the stories of both the last and the current protagonists, giving backstory to rivals other than just that you happened to grow up together, and giving the world“s characters their own conflicts and motives.
The story is not quite as strong, perhaps, as Black and White “s story, but the influence of it gives this one more texture, and the characters, influenced by the last story“s events, feel more dynamic. Insofar as a proper, full-bodied JRPG goes, this would fall under the lighter categories, like the Lunar series or Breath of Fire, but it is still distinctly very Pokemon.
Black 2 and White 2 , relative to Black and White , can be compared to the difference between Red and Blue versus Gold and Silver ; built on the same infrastructure, Black 2 and White 2 don“t really deviate from their older siblings that much on a graphical level. Fundamentally, everything looks basically the same as Black and White, save for the fluidly animated trainer sprites at the beginning of battle and maybe a little cosmetic work at the edge, but the UI benefits the most from this sequel and is exceptionally better through small conveniences and interface cleaning.
The Pokedex is, for those who want to catch ”em all, the greatest of these, with the new Habitat feature. Each area is identified in your Pokedex, and every Pokemon you“ve encountered will be identified. When you“ve encountered them all, the area will receive a â€œstampâ€ in your Pokedex, and a different one when you“ve caught everything available there.
Which is a lot of Pokemon. The roster doesn“t seem to be the full selection (649, for those of you keeping count at home), but Pokemon from previous generations are mixed in this time, adding for an immense array of different monsters to pocket. You don“t have to wait until after the dust settles in the main story to round out your team with an Arcanine or a Pidgeot or whatever, as they (in some form or another) are readily available throughout the game. This doesn“t come at a dearth of previous Pokemon, either, as all the Foonguses and Sawks and whatnot are still here, and even the variety of seasonal forms that Deerling has.
Insofar as gameplay itself, this entry is largely the same. Combat is familiar, though with some light changes to movesets and tutor availabilities, and the old metagame populars, like breeding, are still around. There have been a few changes with that, such as the Everstone having a 100% chance to pass down the parent nature, to streamline the process, but ultimately, it all works the same.
Then there are new features like the Pokemon World Tournament (which is mostly a cooler version of Battle Tower) and PokeStar, which replaces the Musicals in the previous version. Instead of doing musicals, players participate in making a movie, which has them following a script in battle in order to get one of several endings. It doesn“t contribute much to the main gameplay, but it does provide interesting prizes and, more importantly, some side stories as distractions if you don“t want to keep pounding at the main story.
Pokemon tends to rearrange tracks and add in a lot of new ones generation-by-generation, but Black 2 and White 2 did this with aplomb. The familiar jams are there, such as the battle theme and biking theme, but they“ve gotten the usual Missy Elliot-esque flip it and reverse it treatment, remixed to suit a new game. The other songs are far more impressive, though, and represent their area of application very well. Certain town musics can get annoying, but the story is paced well enough where that isn“t really an issue.
It isn“t a perfect game, however. Pokemon Black and White posed an interesting level of self-awareness, questioning how okay it was for Pokemon to essentially act as slave and gladiator to human kind. This was a moral issue that acted as a throughline to the entire game, spurring the majority of the narrative and thematic conflict in the story. The opposition of ideals represented an exceptionally compelling, for Pokemon at least, moral conflict that never quite had a resolution, as there was no right answer. While every Pokemon game has a narrative theme, none was so active or obvious as this.
Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 , unfortunately, shy away from this. Instead of indulging in the philosophical debate here, that whole subplot disintegrates into â€œTeam Plasma is bad and steal Pokemonâ€ without any serious deliberation to the theme. There“s no debate there, and this is immensely disappointing. Where Black and White played a risk with that, this entry, instead, favors the (no pun intended) black-and-white morality of the conventional Pokemon story, which feels like a major step back.
And taking steps back tends to be par for the course in Pokemon sequels. Features like the Pokemon following the player, VS Seeker, and the ability to toggle sprint haven“t made their glorious return to the game, despite existing in previous games. One could argue against me that the first two are design choices, but surely the sprint toggle is useful and certainly not game-breaking, as the same thing can be accomplished by simply holding the button.
Nothing is game-breaking, but this isn“t a huge step forward for the series, either. Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are great experiments in the Pokemon series, having continued the concept experienced in Gold and Silver , while adding in plenty of new ideas to keep the series mobile. Unfortunately, it suffers from simply not moving things forward much. Black 2 and White 2 are definitely worthwhile, albeit not perfect, but fans of the series probably already knew that.
Pros:
+ Excellent UI improvements
+ Superb narrative landscaping
+ Great mix of past and present Pokemon
+ Dynamic characters
Cons:
- Lacks strong themes
- Very little substantial series progress made
Overall Score: 8 (out of 10)
Great
For anyone who says that Pokemon is predictable, Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 Versions may just surprise you.

That Pokemon MMORPG you've been praying for to your Satoshi Tajiri shrine for doesn't seem to be likely, according to producer Junichi Masuda. It just wouldn't be good for the franchise, so he believes.
We've all read in the history books that the original Pokemon concept was based on the idea of trading; Satoshi Tajiri saw the Link Cable for the GameBoy and, being the bug-collecting nerd he was, imagined bugs crawling down them. With the internet revolutionizing gaming as a worldwide affair as it has, Pokemon was undoubtedly pulled into this. Instead of crawling down the Link Cables, they now crawl through the tubes of the internet, with this being especially pertinent with the soon-to-be-released Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 versions.
Series producer Junichi Masuda isn't married to the idea of the game going all internet, though.
"It's much more enjoyable when you're talking in person," he said in an interview with Gamasutra. "So I think the best way is to have kind of both at the same time, being able to enjoy this kind of faraway communication, as well as having aspects that allow you to enjoy communication face-to-face and in-person communication."
To Masuda, the Pokemon series is a face-to-face affair, with the online implementations being just a bonus.
To lifelong fans, that idea could be heartwarming, considering the time spent in schools doing all the face-to-face battles and trading for hard-to-find Pokemon. Still, that nostalgia doesn't completely cloud the idea of how cool a Pokemon MMORPG would be.
But hey, they know what they're doing.
Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 Versions will be available this Sunday, October 7, for the Nintendo DS.
Would you be interested in more expanded Pokemon online functionality? Maybe an MMORPG? Let us know in the comments!

A new trailer for Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 has violently erupted from the womb of the internet, dripping with gameplay of the up-to-now largely secretive game.
Well, not that secretive, but we in the West haven't seen too much of it. Fortunately, that's changing with this brief trailer showing off some cutscenes, the tournament arena, some exorbitantly-overpriced Pokemon food, a little bit of Elesa, a tiny bit of N, and a smidgen of Ghetsis.
While it isn't as glamorous as the anime trailers of Japan's days past, it does set the stage for the sequel to last year's Pokemon bonanza. We see some sepia tones and some Team Plasma, so, as to be expected, shenanigans are underfoot.
But, as usual, you don't have to take my word for it. Take a look below to see the sweet, decadent trailer to fulfill all of your bacchanalian Pokemon desires.
Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 will be hitting those shelves on October 7th, 2012, as you can see in the trailer. You can play it on the DS, I guess... if you want... If you want to get some added functionality, though, The 3DS is the place to do that.

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